Conclusions

IDENTITY AND ORDER

Until the Renaissance, identity and order were thought to be mutually reinforcing; society conferred identities and practices associated with them sustained political, religious and social orders. This relationship became problematic when people began to distinguish themselves from their roles. The latter were increasingly seen as artificial constructs whose performance confined, even imprisoned, the self. Citing Hegel, but also modern psychology, I argued that the tension between reflective and social selves is often pronounced and can be considered a defining psychological feature of the modern era. This phenomenon gave rise to four generic strategies intended to reduce the gulf between reflective and social selves.

The first two strategies, both of which I characterize as anti-modern, emerged in the Renaissance. They attempt to resolve internal conflict by doing away with interiority and reflexivity. One seeks to do this by means of a secular utopia in which individuality will be all but expunged. The other aspires to recreate a religious-based cosmic order in which there will be no tension between individuals and their society because the former will be devout Christians and the latter will instantiate Christian principles and practices.

Thomas More, author of the first modern utopia, pioneered strategy one.⁷¹ As we saw in chapter two, More was deeply troubled by the growing tension between what he considered his inner self and his political and social roles. His Utopia aimed to overcome such alienation by submerging individuals so deeply in their social milieu that they would lose their interiority and reflexivity. Utopia allows for no visible distinctions among people, no independent careers, no real free time and no privacy. Such a society was intellectually appealing to More but unrealistic, and this may be why he acknowledged the "foolishness" of thinking that it might be a model for Europe. John Tyndale, responsible for the first printed English language bible, was one of a number of dissenting Protestants who helped to develop the second strategy. He rejected society as hypocritical and corrupt, in large part because people were forced to assume false roles. By leading an honest Christian life based on the bible, the tension between identity and society might be finessed to the extent that true believers could withdraw from or create their own society as the Pilgrims would later do.

These choices had diametrically opposed implications for order. More sought identity in society through active participation in its roles and rituals. Tyndale and his followers sought an identity outside of and against the conventions of society. Both strategies were equally problematic as evidenced by the fate of their proponents. More left office to become a private person because he could not accept Henry VIII’s rupture with the Catholic Church, but was arrested and executed. Ironically, the inner self he sought to deny rebelled against the public role he would have to play in an anti-Catholic regime. Tyndale's rejection of the state and its religion made him appear a double danger to the authorities and he was burned at the stake in 1536.

Tyndale’s project – and strategy two in general – requires a great strengthening of the inner self if believers are to turn away from society and face the tribulations and persecution such a life generally involves. While the inner self is strengthened, individual identity is nevertheless limited by anchoring it in the Bible. Identity is regarded as a communal phenomenon and individual differences are muted as far as possible as they are considered relatively unimportant in comparison to one’s relationship to god. Strategy two attempts to address interiority and reflexivity by reducing their importance but emphasizing aspects of them that can be made compatible with a Christian social order. A negative “other” is very helpful, if not essential, to this enterprise because it provides the role model against which the inner self is defined and solidified. For Tyndale and early Protestants, the Antichrist served as this "other" – as it does for present day Dispensationalists. More and his Utopia did not require an external "other" because his intended selves found expression and purpose in social roles. To the extent More and strategy one needs an "other," it is an internal one that feels hemmed in and yearns for oblivion.

These strategies that would be adopted in one form or another by many subsequent thinkers and movements with anti-modern agendas. Chapter two showed how More's underlying philosophical project was copied by, or at least found echoes in, many subsequent utopias. These utopias embed their citizens in social orders that allow little to no individual distinction in wealth or honor and only limited privacy and free-time. They do away with politics and thereby deny the possibility of free thinking and legitimate opposition. They kill, expel, discipline or brainwash citizens who raise objections, and some do this to those who merely give evidence of being contrarian. Rousseau is very much in this tradition. He regards interiority and reflection as the principal sources of human corruption because they encourage the desire for distinction and give rise to amour propre. His Social Contract is a variant of More's Utopia in that reflection is encouraged, but only about the community, never about the self, in the expectation that this will give rise to the general will.⁷² The triumph of the general will depends on the nearly complete stifling of interiority – although clearly, not Rousseau's. Marx and Engels develop another version, which arguably reduces, if not does away with, interiority through the near-total social integration of the worker in his or her enterprise and society. Alienation [Aufhebung], considered a product of exploitation, is made impossible by definition. In contrast to More's Utopia, workers have considerable freedom in how they spend their time, and great emphasis is put on free time.⁷³ However, there will no distinctions of wealth or status among them and a collective identity has largely replaced individual ones.⁷⁴ Engels, at least, recognizes that this shift in self-identification will not be easy to effect.⁷⁵

Strategy two builds on previous efforts by Medieval millennial sects to bring the social order in line with their understanding of Christianity, although many of them resorted to violence toward this end.⁷⁶ The Left Behind novels follow the Tyndale model closely Interiority is encouraged but only to construct an identity based on total commitment to Jesus. Rather than withdrawing from society, the Left Behind's authors destroy the corrupt society through war, famine, natural disasters. Jesus returns to create a millennium where the faithful can live a Christian life. Believers are integrated into a new society that is conceived of as a religious utopia. Inhabitants – they can hardly be called citizens -- possess little real interiority and reflexivity. Their life and thoughts are focused on Jesus and what reflections they have are encouraged take the form of love and admiration for their savior. Those who fail to achieve this level of commitment are zapped by lightning, regardless of their outward conformity. There is no meaningful wealth, and the distraction of profane interpersonal relations is greatly reduced by doing away with the hormones that arouse sexual desire. Residents are, in effect, neutered. Some opposition is allowed, but only to set an example for others when they are hit by lightning bolts and sent to hell to roast for eternity.

Secular and religious utopias do away with interiority and reflection or limit and direct it toward desirable ends. This is a major reason why their critics characterize these utopias as dystopias. Dystopias are more diverse than utopias in their horrors, but some very prominent works (e.g. Zamyatin's We, Orwell's 1984) achieve their most chilling effects by reducing interiority and reflexivity. Zamyatin and Orwell follow More in introducing regimentation, uniformity, propaganda and surveillance. In Huxley's "soft" dystopia, carrots largely replace sticks, but reduce interiority and reflection just as effectively by hooking individuals on drugs and sex. People are enticed to lull themselves into a numbing but pleasurable form of mindlessness.

Utopias and dystopias alike deprive human beings of meaningful freedom. In Don Giovanni, Mozart and Da Ponte explore the other side of this equation: the consequences of near total freedom. This is, of course, an instrumental goal of strategy four. People must free themselves of all social roles and conditioning to discover and express their inner selves. Don Giovanni suggests that efforts to liberate ourselves in this fashion ultimately deprives us of our humanity by reducing us to beasts governed by raw appetites. Don Giovanni is presented as the inevitable outcome of the Enlightenment project: a man liberated from external and internal restraints who is a danger to himself and everyone around him. He is intended to rebut the idealistic expectation that human beings will use freedom and reason to make themselves into more ethical beings, as Kant and so many other Enlightenment thinkers hoped. Mozart and Da Ponte believe that reason is more likely to be directed outwards, with the goal of satisfying unconstrained and therefore more urgent appetites. Untrammeled reason will not lead to a more harmonious society, but one in which a minority assert their will and exploit everyone else. This powerful minority will not be any happier, merely driven. Die Zauberflöte elaborates on to this theme. It suggests that political orders that pretend to be based on reason and love for humanity are really tyrannies. From our vantage point, Sarastro's realm, like Schiller's Spain in Don Carlos, can be regarded as the precursors of the totalitarian regimes that plagued the twentieth century.

Don Giovanni is more an archetype than a person and the Commendatore takes him to the underworld, not to hell. This Greek framing is appropriate because Giovanni behaves the way Greeks expect of someone who frees himself of social constraints. The opera can be interpreted as an avant la lettre critique of the fourth strategy of identity construction that would be associated with the Romantic movement. Mozart and DaPonte suggest that the project of autonomy is as dangerous as it is hollow. Conservatives still read Don Giovanni as a warning about individual assertion run amok, but the opera should also be understood as an equally powerful critique of the ancien régime and more traditional approaches to identity. Mozart and Da Ponte have no sympathy for the class-based hierarchy that sustains itself through superstition and oppression. Commoners like Leporello, Zerlina, Masetto, Figaro and Susanna, and the generally nameless peasants who surround them, are subject to the whims of exploitative patrons upon whom they depend for sustenance or support. Aristocrats are not necessarily any freer. To the degree they have internalized the moral codes of their society they must enact their assigned roles, suppress their emotions and defer, or forever postpone, gratification of ordinary human desires, let alone any attempt to develop and express more sophisticated personal projects. They lead crabbed, unfulfilled and thoroughly unenviable lives. This may be one reason why the women are so attracted to Giovanni. Zerlina aside, the aristocratic women are pathetic figures who oscillate between passivity and hysteria.

The deeper question raised by the opera goes to the core of the modern identity dilemma. Is it possible to find a rewarding and stable compromise between or alternative to anti-modern and modern approaches to identity? Could Europeans escape the antiquated values and confining roles of the traditional order without giving rise to even more dreadful horrors? Mozart and Da Ponte explore this possibility in Così fan tutti which voices the hope that enlightened cynicism might provide the basis for a more sophisticated ultimately more satisfying understandings of self and more stable social orders. Their cautious optimism stands in sharp contrast to the unrelievedly negative takes on the Enlightenment offered by modern critics like Oswald Spengler, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Leo Strauss and Zygmunt Bauman.⁷⁷ The reconciliation that occurs in the last scene of this opera can be analyzed in Kantian terms. The Königsberg sage contended that externally imposed rules crushed our freedom – as they do for the aristocrats in Don Giovanni – but that freedom from all rules makes us slaves to our appetites – as it does for Don Giovanni. To avoid these evils we must impose necessity on ourselves. We must adhere to rules that we have prescribed because they reflect our understanding that they do good for others. The reconciliation of the lovers is acceptance of a self-imposed order, and one that is understood to be good for all parties concerned. This resolution is decidedly in the face of the old order because it appears to affirm behavior that is traditionally considered immoral and to undermine the sanctity of marriage.